"We're asking schools to catch students up - and at the same time, we're taking money out of the state school budgets for the coming years," Zeff said. He also said he knows progress will not come easy during the middle of the pandemic, especially when lawmakers slashed nearly $1 billion in education funding. Those working to close the education gap, Zeff said, must now double down to try to provide the best opportunities to students impacted the most by these hardships. "If you are born poor in this city, then you're more likely to stay poor in this city than almost anywhere else in the country." "As a result of many of these systemic policies, we're also one of the most unequal cities in the country," Chang said.
The areas below the line are predominantly Black and have a lower social-economic status. He pointed out the areas north of the I-20 line tend to be whiter and have a better social-economic status. Zeff and Chang worry about students in Atlanta schools who experience a regression brought on by the pandemic and magnified by the loss of in-person learning.Ĭhang said the city is split by a diagonal line that roughly goes down Interstate-20, which divides the two most northern clusters North Atlanta, and Grady from the other seven in the southern part of the city. It's the student who's denied the opportunity." Achievement gap makes it sound like it's the student it's not the student that is not achieving. "A lot of people call it the achievement gap," Zeff said. Students have a lot more exposure to opportunities outside the classroom in higher-income areas, like camps and tutors. The so-called "summer slide" suggests that students typically experience a month of learning loss over summer break, with low-income students generally more affected, Zeff said. The return to in-person learning will be almost three times longer than the summer break. The disadvantages that systemic or social-economic hardships cause students who live in Atlanta's more southern clusters, Zeff said, are made worse by learning loss that occurs typically during the summer. "School closures caused by the pandemic may have largely eliminated those gains for thousands of underserved students," said Learn4Life executive director Ken Zeff. The pandemic also wiped out student achievement gains made in recent years in Atlanta. The study projected that only three out of 10 historically underserved students will now be on track to grade-level proficiency.
Two specific proficiency measures that are highly correlated to long-term student success, 3rd-grade reading, and 8th-grade math, show an expected decline of 3.5% and 4.8%, respectively, the study found.Īchievement projections are more concerning for Black, Latino, and economically disadvantaged students in the metro Atlanta region. "The longer it goes, the less you will remember," said Ed Chang, the executive director of redefinED atlanta, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of all students through high-quality education.Ĭhang's organization and another group called Learn4Life released a study over the summer examining the data of students in metro Atlanta after schools shut down in March. The experts said they understand the need for safety precautions for students, teachers and staff, but they said the impact of being away is of extreme concern. That long of a break, educational experts told GPB News, may further exacerbate the inequality gap between Black and Latino students and their white peers. Experts fear that could further exacerbate the education gap. Seven months will have passed when Atlanta students finally return to in-person classes.